Monday, December 22, 2014

R-E-L-A-X! Fusion Is On the Way!

Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details | Technology content from Aviation Week:





OK, maybe not QUITE as small as the pair of units that power the Terminator in T3, but never the less a "Compact" Fusion Reactor (CFR) the size of a semi-trailer / container ship container vs a good sized building.

The article is well worth the read -- enough power for 80K homes or a major ship from a unit the size of a container -- lots of obstacles, certainly some likely over optimism, but WAY more real than "Hope and Change"!

It makes me think of Matt Ridley's excellent book "The Rational Optimist" which I read and liked but never blog reviewed. It gives a nice big picture of how from Malthus to Anthro Global Warming, alarmism as been constant, but so far human innovation has been FAR stronger.

The numerous predictions of "Peak Oil" and the reality of gas slipping under $2 due to Fracking is just one of the many examples of how innovation has a very strong tendency to trump a lot of what appears to be very rational pessimism that has the very bad Achilles heel of not taking technical innovation and the fact that "trend lines" often don't last into consideration.

'via Blog this'

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